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A Statistical Expert on the Margin: The Career Trajectory of József Kőrösy

Un statisticien à la périphérie : la carrière de József Kőrösy
Mátyás Erdélyi
p. 127-150

Résumés

L’article examine la naissance des statistiques modernes en Europe centrale en s’appuyant sur l’étude de cas de la carrière de József Kőrösy (1844-1906). En tant que directeur du bureau municipal des statistiques de Budapest, il a produit une quantité impressionnante de statistiques, qui ont suscité de profondes controverses entre statisticiens, juristes et médecins. L’article revisite d’abord les confrontations épistémiques entre Kőrösy et ses collègues hongrois sur la valeur des données statistiques ; il examine ensuite le débat interdisciplinaire entre Kőrösy et les médecins viennois au sujet du vaccin contre la variole ; et analyse enfin les discussions mathématiques entre Ladislaus Bortkiewicz et Kőrösy sur le concept de groupes d’âge standard.

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Texte intégral

  • 1 K. Keleti, 1869.
  • 2 Budapest was officially established in 1873 from the merger of three cities, Pest, Buda, and Óbuda
  • 3 Kőrösy changed his family name several times during his lifetime and used the different variations (...)
  • 4 On the early history of the municipal statistical bureau: D. Dányi, 1964; B. Földes, 1937; G. Thir (...)
  • 5 “A pestvárosi statisztikai hivatal”, 1878, p. 3.
  • 6 J. Kőrösi, 1876, p. V. The first volume on mortality statistics was followed by several others in (...)

1In 1869, Károly Keleti, the founder of the Hungarian statistical office, announced a plan to establish “municipal statistical bureaus” in Hungary to gather statistical data concerning the “inner life of towns” and to survey the “civilizational standing of the country”.1 Pest2 seemed the ideal candidate and, shortly after Keleti’s proposal, József Kőrösy3 was appointed director of the newly established statistical office.4 The creation of the municipal statistical bureau unleashed the production of statistical data on a large scale, unimaginable in the preceding decades. By 1870, it had already created a series entitled Bulletins of the Statistical Office in Pest that became an organ for disseminating the results of statistical investigations in the city. While it was a novelty in itself for statistical data to become available to the public on such a large scale, the statistical office also started to engage in the public sphere with the publication, from 1873, of “weekly reports” on the number of deaths and births in Budapest (duly reproduced in the main dailies).5 In 1876, it also published a first volume on mortality in Budapest in which it set out a clear agenda to improve the public hygiene of the city.6 The considerable praise for Kőrösy’s statistical works expressed by his contemporaries elevated the standing of both Kőrösy and the statistical bureau in Budapest.

  • 7 “A fővárosi halandóság”, 1876, p. 1119.
  • 8 “A fővárosi halandóság”, 1876, p. 1119.
  • 9 “Budapest főorvosa”, 1878.

2However, Kőrösy’s mortality statistics soon encountered considerable opposition as well. The Fővárosi Lapok dismissed the idea of weekly reports because they portrayed the city as a dangerous and deadly place. In the eyes of his critics, it was Kőrösy’s particular obsession to represent Budapest as the “most unhealthy city in the world”.7 These mortality statistics were also criticized from a methodological point of view: Kőrösy’s numbers included the extremely sick persons who were transported to Budapest from the countryside and soon died there in a hospital.8 Gerő Patrubány, the chief medical officer in Budapest, claimed that mortality rates in the city were particularly high because Kőrösy included newborns, while other capitals did not. At the International Congress of Hygiene and Demography in Paris (1878), Patrubány noted, it was revealed that Parisian mortality rates did not include babies younger than 3 days old and that the threshold was 2 months in London.9 The satirical weekly, Borsszem Jankó, summarized the issue as follows:

  • 10 “A patrubanyalukai főorvostól”, 1878, p. 5.

“Those who receive a fixed salary from Budapest, why would they promote mortality, instead of immortality? This is an unforgivable official behaviour.”10

  • 11 B. Földes, 1937, p. 880.

Kőrösy was even labelled “unpatriotic” according to the recollection of a long-time employee, and many simply wanted to get rid of the statistical bureau or at least “colour” its numbers.11

  • 12 K. Keleti, 1874.
  • 13 D. Rózsa, 2017, p. 1073.
  • 14 For the history of international statistical congresses: N. Randeraad, 2011.

3The case of mortality statistics was just one of many conflicts and encounters between József Kőrösy and physicians, lawyers, intellectuals, political figures, and other notables. This was a paradigmatic encounter as Kőrösy’s reviewers scrutinized his social and scientific credentials to discredit the statistical figures and conclusions in question. This pattern, however, can be put into a larger context to better understand how credibility played a crucial role in fin-de-siècle scientific discourses and to describe how knowledge production in the statistical field was related to its social context and the social prestige of those involved. Kőrösy’s example is relevant not only with respect to disciplinary debates but also to the challenges faced by reformists in Central Europe, and, maybe, the causes of their demise thereafter. Kőrösy’s struggles, though, were not limited to Central Europe. His career encompassed the European and even the global intellectual field. Kőrösy was, of course, active in the Hungarian public sphere as the head of the statistical office in Budapest. But he also participated in international statistical congresses from the very beginning: he was already part of the Hungarian delegation at the congress held in Saint-Petersburg in 1872,12 and was a founding member of the International Institute of Statistics created in 1885.13 These congresses and other international venues served him well to introduce new statistical tools while addressing existing social problems: the international activity of Kőrösy and his statistical creativity prompted reviews and censure beyond the borders of the Habsburg Monarchy.14

  • 15 T. M. Porter, 1995.
  • 16 S. Shapin, 1995.
  • 17 I. Hacking, 1990, pp. 189-199.
  • 18 M. Labbé, 2007; B. Zimmermann, 1994.

4It is well-established in the social studies of science that credibility in numbers is based less on the solidity of emerging data management and information technologies than on the specific needs of experts and scientific communities.15 The maxim of the field tells us to differentiate between the credibility and the validity of arguments.16 Statistical tools and figures can be considered, therefore, as reflections of the social and economic reality that produced them. Here, knowledge production always takes place in a specific (social) context that involves different actors with particular motivations. In The Taming of Chance, Ian Hacking claims that statisticians increasingly contributed to the shaping of social reality through the measurement of certain social phenomena that constituted the first step toward defining the problem in the public sphere.17 This perspective was often emphasized with respect to the activities of municipal statistical offices.18 In the case of József Kőrösy and the municipal statistical bureau of Budapest, the ultimate goal was to modernize the capital, and statistical figures operated in a field populated by competing, multi-disciplinary actors. Physicians, economists, lawyers, and politicians were involved in these discussions and, in some cases, successfully undermined the credibility of numbers and the problematization of social issues.

5The goal of the present paper is to discuss the rise of modern statistics in East-Central Europe based on the case of József Kőrösy’s career. Here, the rise of modern statistics refers to a threefold process: the rigorous collection of data, its mathematical processing, and the emergence of statistical writing as a dominant mode of representation. The paper analyses how the rise of modern statistics took shape in time and space (both geographic and symbolic), what were the main constituents of this process in Hungary and in the Habsburg Monarchy, and what were the political obstacles and epistemic challenges that this process faced, based on Kőrösy’s career. It also reflects on the intrinsic relation between statistical methods and analytical goals in the second half of the nineteenth century.

  • 19 J. Osterhammel, 2014, p. 26.
  • 20 J. Körösi, 1879, pp. 142-143.
  • 21 J. Körösi, 1879, p. 145.
  • 22 T. M. Porter, 2007.
  • 23 E. Brix, 1982; W. Göderle, 2016; J. D. Hansen, 2015; G. Kövér, 2016; M. Labbé, 2019.

6Municipal statistical bureaus were a key component of the international statistical field in the nineteenth century.19 Kőrösy was a distinguished figure and an active participant in this field. He believed that the principal task of these bureaus was to serve the needs of public administration, but also, importantly, he described them as an institution that needs to have a scientific output.20 “It is not possible to do statistics without being critical.”21 This maxim also has important consequences for the autonomy of the statistical bureau: it should not function under the direct authority of the municipality because it needs to exercise “moral control”. This quasi-scientific function coexisted with other functions, often subordinated to them, in German statistical bureaus as well.22 Statistics as a form of public administration often created challenges and hampered the production of accurate statistical data, in contrast to the maxims of scientific statistics. Census data on language statistics is the most studied example,23 but demography, mortality statistics in particular, and moral statistics were also affected by the dissonant relation between accuracy and credibility.

7The paper follows the spatial entanglements of Kőrösy’s career and is structured into three parts. The first part recounts the epistemic confrontations between Kőrösy and his Hungarian peers on the value and use of statistical data. The second part focuses on debates between medical professionals and Kőrösy, notably a dispute between Kőrösy and Viennese anti-vaccinationist physicians about Kőrösy’s method of “relative intensity”, a debate with higher stakes concerning the protective power of vaccination against smallpox. The last part analyses theoretical discussions between Ladislaus Bortkiewicz and Kőrösy on the concept of standard population and age standardization.

1. Kőrösy’s statistics and their reception in Hungary

  • 24 For the biography of Kőrösy, see: T. Szél, 1927, pp. 7-26.
  • 25 Mór Jókai (1825-1904) was a Hungarian novelist and parliamentary deputy.
  • 26 “Szántói” is the praedicatum of nobility that literally means “from Szántó”.
  • 27 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. B. 28.
  • 28 S. Patriarca, 2003.

8József Kőrösy, the son of an impoverished Jewish merchant named Hajduska, was born in 1844 in Pest.24 This self-made man, autodidact, and philanthropist could have been a Jókai25 hero who encountered all the positives of that burgeoning period but also its failings. As an 18-year-old clerk at the Erste Ungarische Assekuranz Gesellschaft he was more interested in the social, “living” animation of the Hungarian capital than in the theoretical lectures he sporadically attended at the University. His writings first earned him the privilege of editing the “national economy” section of the Pesti Napló newspaper, and then in 1869, he became the first director of the newly established statistical bureau in Pest, a position he retained until his death in 1906. Although he never received a university degree, his scientific achievements earned him a position as corresponding member of the Hungarian Academy of Sciences in 1879 and a full member in 1903. His name changes also bore witness to his commitment to the Magyar cause (or to assimilation) as well as his academic successes: in 1869 his family name Hajduska was Magyarized to Kőrösi and he was among the few Jewish persons to be ennobled in the dualist period: he finally became szántói Kőrösy in 1896.26 He thus became a well-respected member of the Budapest bourgeoisie and the country’s intellectual elite. It must be added that Kőrösy’s “national sentiment” was very much defined by the statistician’s mindset. In a manuscript entitled “The National Vanity and the Value of Nations” he was sarcastic about national honour, claiming that every nation is composed of both geniuses and average minds, and that there was no proof that the gap between the two would not be similar in nations at different levels of development. Thus, anyone should only be proud of cultural achievements of a given nation if they actually contributed to those achievements.27 Statistics, undoubtedly, played a significant role in nation-building processes throughout the nineteenth century. Statistical figures even contributed to the creation of nations,28 but nation and ethnicity played a negligible role in Kőrösy’s oeuvre, which is truly remarkable in the radically nationalist setting of nineteenth century Hungary.

  • 29 J. Szeredás, 1970, pp. 18-20.
  • 30 A. Kígyósi, 2007, p. 721.
  • 31 T. Szél, 1927, pp. 43-45.
  • 32 For an overview of Kőrösy’s statistical oeuvre: T. Szél, 1927.
  • 33 T. M. Porter, 1986, p. 41.

9Most of the statistical bureau’s output was authored by Kőrösy until 1906. The bureau regularly published three series of data: the already mentioned Bulletins of the Statistical Office, and weekly and monthly reports. This followed the rhythm of data collection: some data providers were required to send their figures on a weekly basis (typically demographic data) and others monthly (trade and transportation, banks).29 In terms of data collection, Kőrösy was highly innovative: from the early 1870s he started using individual sheets even before the system was implemented by the Central Statistical Office;30 he promoted the centralization of data collection; and remodelled data forms in many areas, such those intended for hospitals and death reports.31 Kőrösy used the monthly and weekly reports to construct more detailed cross-tables on mortality rates. The activities of the statistical office covered diverse topics such as population censuses in Budapest, economic statistics, public administration statistics, public health and welfare statistics, education statistics, construction works, and housing statistics.32 The most common form of statistical writing in Kőrösy’s publications was the statistical table of aggregates and mean values. Figures were represented in cross-tables to uncover the influence of select independent variables. In the case of mortality statistics, for instance, these included the occupation, wealth, religion, and gender of the deceased persons, but also geographical distribution, the date of death and weather conditions. Kőrösy’s publications always included an analysis of the potential causes of death. He not only saw the importance of registering social facts but also believed that statistical writings should belong to the “numerical social science of laws”33 in the tradition of Adolphe Quetelet.

  • 34 I briefly described the debate between Kőrösy and Jekelfalussy on mortality rates in a previous ar (...)
  • 35 J. Kőrösi, 1891b, pp. 135-137.
  • 36 M. Pisztóry, 1892, pp. 489-490.
  • 37 J. Kőrösi, 1891a. Jekelfalussy’s own project materialized a few years later in 1896 on the occasio (...)
  • 38 J. Kőrösi, 1891a; J. Jekelfalussy, 1891; J. Kőrösi, 1891b; J. Jekelfalussy, 1892.

10The introductory story about mortality rates showed the type of criticism prompted by the municipal statistical bureau’s results. These were often embedded in the incongruous status of the institute: it belonged to the municipal public administration, while at the same time pursued research on scientific statistics. This double function gave rise to political and epistemic debates. A notable confrontation took place between Kőrösy and József Jekelfalussy (1849-1901), a statistician at the Central Statistical Office.34 In 1887, at a session of the National Economy and Statistics Committee at the Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Kőrösy proposed to launch a book series entitled County Monographs. The publication would describe regional economic disparities and their causes in Hungary county by county.35 The first lectures were held in 1887, but Kőrösy’s ill health and lengthy stay abroad prevented his participation in 1888, and he resigned from the committee. Jekelfalussy took over the leadership of the project until 1891 when it was suddenly stopped.36 When Kőrösy returned in 1891, lectures were relaunched and a first volume was published in the series.37 It was not the series itself that bothered Jekelfalussy, but Kőrösy’s introduction and the concept of statistical logic that he developed there.38

  • 39 J. Kőrösi, 1891a, p. XIII.
  • 40 J. Kőrösi, 1891c.

11Kőrösy’s main thesis was that statistical logic differs from “ordinary logic” because the latter is based on the principle of identity and the law of contradiction. In short, the essence of the statistical method is that it “quantifies qualitative differences”.39 Another characteristic of the statistical method is that it always provides mean values and uses “aggregate” concepts. These aggregate concepts, contrary to the “type” used in ordinary logic, might contain individuals with different sets of attributes. Kőrösy’s aggregate concept is very similar to the concept of l’homme moyen. According to Kőrösy’s own example, no white man can be found in a group of people of colour, nor any immortal among humans in general. In contrast, in a statistical argument that involves groups and not individuals, a “coward soldier” can be part of a “brave regiment” that wins a battle even if he does not fight in it. In addition, the existence of a coward soldier does not make the regiment cowardly, just as the brave regiment does not make all its members necessarily brave.40

  • 41 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, pp. 951-952.
  • 42 J. Jekelfalussy, 1892, p. 57.

12In the eyes of Jekelfalussy, this introduction reveals Kőrösy’s ineptitude and his inability to understand concepts in ordinary logic. For Jekelfalussy, Kőrösy failed to understand the difference between the substance of a concept and the objects belonging to the concept. Whereas there can be no contradiction within the substance, i.e. the attributes of the concepts, its individual manifestations can have contradictory attributes.41 Jekelfalussy also questioned Kőrösy’s interpretation of, and references to, Mill and Sigwart. Mill’s logic differentiated between names and not concepts, whereas Sigwart wrote about “general concepts” (Allgemeinbegriff) and not ordinary concepts, as translated into Hungarian by Kőrösy.42

  • 43 J. Kőrösi, 1891b, pp. 127-130.
  • 44 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, pp. 948-949.
  • 45 K. Knies, 1850.

13The second issue concerned the opposition between “practical” and “theoretical” knowledge. The County Monographs, written by “practical” men, was antithetical to the mission of the statistician, who believed in the capacity of social statistics to reveal fundamental causal connections in order to serve the betterment of society in matters of public health, education, and the “wealth of the nation” in general. In Kőrösy’s view, there is a fundamental duality between practice and theory: practice is always an individual endeavour originating directly from facts and based on sensation, whereas theory is based on the observation of hundreds of thousands of cases. Theory can only be statistical and thus becomes scientific.43 Here, Jekelfalussy drew attention to the contradictions in Kőrösy’s manifesto and pointed out that practice and theory are irreconcilable in the way proposed by Kőrösy for statistical arguments.44 Kőrösy’s position, though, is remarkable: instead of aligning himself with “practice”, he emphasized his connection to theory, and the ability of statistics to demonstrate causal connections and to discover natural laws with the aid of empirical research. The German economist Karl Knies offered a helping hand in this endeavour.45 According to Knies, there were two types of “statists” in the early nineteenth century: those who described “states” (facts) and those that looked for laws. Kőrösy, of course, belonged to the latter category and conceptualized his analytical tasks in a sociological manner, to uncover the causation of social ills.

  • 46 J. Jekelfalussy, 1892, p. 59.
  • 47 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, p. 949.

14Jekelfalussy questioned the competence of Kőrösy as a statistician and doubted that he was qualified in any sense to construct social laws or uncover the causation of social phenomena. The personal tone of the debate is still striking. Jekelfalussy calls Kőrösy’s arguments an “unintelligible and deranged speech”46 and declares that his ideas lead him to “absurdities”.47

  • 48 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, p. 950.

“And voilà: ‘quod erat demonstrandum!’ Let us bow down before this pretentious wisdom that interprets and applies even the most primitive logical truth in a way that we should think that someone made a wicked joke of the author when they put such nonsense into his mouth; or that our author is so ignorant that he cannot comprehend the most ordinary logical arguments.”48

  • 49 J. Jekelfalussy, 1892, p. 60.
  • 50 L. Daston & H. O. Sibum, 2003, p. 2.

This type of personal attack was unusual in the public sphere, but Jekelfalussy’s own references to the social gap between the two men might explain the tone. Born as József Hajduska, son of an impoverished Jewish merchant, entrusted to his uncle to finish the gymnasium in Pest, and having never graduated from university, Kőrösy could hardly be treated as an equal to a typical nobleman such as Jekelfalussy in the public sphere. The latter, son of a landowner, noble by birth, and a former military officer, possessed all the necessary social prerogatives to draw the following conclusion about his rival: “ignotos fallit, notis est derisui”.49 A brief look at the portraits of the two men suggests the same contrast in their habitus. Jekelfalussy posed as a perfect gentleman with a military erectness, while Kőrösy, with his round glasses and a long beard, looked like an otherworldly intellectual. The use of Latin expressions, the symbol of Bildung acquired in the Gymnasium, was prevalent in the writings of Jekelfalussy, in stark contrast to the style of Kőrösy. In the eyes of Jekelfalussy, Kőrösy was not credible as a Wissenschaftler, because he did not enjoy the prerogatives of the noble Gelehrter, despite the Gelehrter and the Wissenschaftler often being portrayed as dialectical opposites.50 There is no overt anti-Semitism in Jekelfalussy’s writings, but Kőrösy’s Jewishness without doubt affected his public recognition and the language and expressions used by Jekelfalussy suggest a strong social contempt for Kőrösy.

  • 51 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. A. 60, p. 1.
  • 52 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. A. 60, pp. 32-40.
  • 53 A. Desrosières, 1993, pp. 94-104.
  • 54 A. Desrosières, 1993, pp. 104-111.
  • 55 E. M. Magnello, 2011, pp. 262-263.

15The logical structure of statistical arguments remained a topic of interest for Kőrösy and he tackled the issue in an unpublished manuscript in 1898. “Is it possible to replace or to modify the conventional theses of general logic for the sake of statistical thinking?”51 Statistical arguments are always numerical and contain definite numbers that relate to aggregate concepts. A statistical argument is more than a classical syllogism, because instead of simply subsuming the predicate into the subject (Socrates is mortal), it collates the phenomena in question. Quetelet’s influence is palpable in the treatment of collective concepts. The average of a collective concept does not tell anything about the individuals that compose the collectivity. It is possible that the average height of a population is 160 centimetres but there are individuals whose height is either 159 centimetres or 161 centimetres. Moreover, it is possible that the average height of buildings in a city is exactly 2.8 metres, but we cannot find any actual building of such a height”.52 In this sense Kőrösy adhered to the principles formulated by Quetelet, who explained that this “moyenne subjective”, a term coined by Adolphe Bertillon, represented real entities, whose variation could unearth constant causes.53 This holist position had far-reaching consequences in terms of the debate between contagionists, infectionists and hygienists54 on the value of numerical methods, in which Kőrösy ardently opposed any conception that refuted the relevance of medical statistics or claimed that the only reality is that of the individual. Kőrösy’s position was similar to the view of statisticians in the early nineteenth century and became somewhat outdated by the end of the century.55 He took averages as the basic unit of statistical arguments and did not apply probability calculations or methods of mathematical statistics.

2. Statisticians and physicians: the case of medical statistics

  • 56 Some general work but without much information on the Habsburg Empire: S. Williamson, 2007; M. J. (...)
  • 57 A. Rusnock, 2007, p. 346.
  • 58 A. Rusnock, 2007, pp. 354-355.

16Nineteenth century statisticians often faced challenges because statistical data were not available in the right format. For instance, while the number of causalities of an infectious disease was available, the effects of the same disease on the overall population were more difficult to investigate, even simply to compare two samples. If the attributes of the overall population were unknown, it seemed impossible to draw conclusions about the spread of an infectious disease, especially if the decisive information had to be sought among the disease-free and non-hospitalized population. The dilemma of smallpox vaccination presented this difficulty: data was only available for numbers of victims and infected persons. Kőrösy, here, joined a long and well-documented quarrel between vaccinationists and anti-vaccinationists56 closely connected to the evaluation of therapeutic methods and the use of medical statistics. Andrea Rustock nicely demonstrated that, from the early nineteenth century, the case of smallpox vaccination was intertwined with the debate surrounding the methodology of hospital trials in general. Hospital trials involved carefully ordered observations and detailed records of cases. This “case history” approach was contrary to the method of statistical proof that gained recognition during the century and that mainly took the form of numerical ratios of cases.57 The statistical argument compared the chances of dying of smallpox in general and the protective power of vaccination; and for the latter, it was also crucial to numerically determine any negative impacts of vaccination. There was a major contrast, still relevant at the time of Kőrösy’s debate, between medical practice and the public health perspective. Physicians tended to evaluate therapies based on a qualitative approach, starting with the examination of individual cases, whereas public health experts looked at the population and not the individual as the unit of analysis.58

  • 59 J. B. Hamilton, 1887.
  • 60 J. Kőrösi, 1889.
  • 61 N. Durbach, 2005; I. Glynn & J. Glynn, 2004; C. Huerkamp, 1985; S. Williamson, 2007.

17Kőrösy was a vaccinationist. He firmly believed that smallpox vaccination would reduce the effects of future epidemics. His goal was to prove the protective power of vaccination through statistical means, and hence its utility, with the aid of “relative intensity”. He presented the method in a comprehensive study at the 11th International Medical Congress in Washington in 188759 and then published it in a separate volume in 1889,60 thereby opening a critical debate amongst medical experts. Kőrösy studied the protective power of vaccination in quantitative terms. He was convinced that the question could only be decided by means of a large-scale survey, and that individual cases could not provide an answer. Previously, medical experts had been unable to obtain a decisive proof because they lacked the right method. Long-term statistics, Kőrösy argued, demonstrated the usefulness of vaccination – based on declining mortality rates in Sweden after 1817 – but also its risks – as illustrated by the case of Bavaria where smallpox remained a major cause of mortality despite obligatory vaccination. Comparison of mortality rates between regions that had introduced obligatory vaccination and those that had not proved equally inconclusive as both vaccinationist and anti-vaccinationists found cases to prove their point.61 According to Kőrösy, the protective power of vaccination could best be judged by dividing the population into two groups, the vaccinated and the unvaccinated, and by comparing smallpox lethality and infection rates across the two groups. However, the methodological problem was that the two groups (available in the form of samples in hospital statistics) presented variations in attributes other than vaccination status. Kőrösy’s method aimed to compensate for this variation in the data.

  • 62 J. Kőrösy, 1897, p. 25ff.; id., 1889, p. 108.
  • 63 J. Kőrösy, 1887.

18Kőrösy noticed that comparison between the lethality of smallpox among the vaccinated (L1) and the lethality of smallpox among the unvaccinated (L2) resulted in incorrect conclusions as other attributes of the groups were unknown. Instead, Kőrösy proposed to compare the ratio between smallpox lethality and the general mortality rate of vaccinated persons (M1) with the ratio between smallpox lethality and the general mortality rate of unvaccinated persons (M2). Thus, if L1/M1 is smaller than L2/M2, this statistically proves the protective power of vaccination.62 With the aid of this method, Kőrösy demonstrated the protective power of vaccination based on data from hospitals in Hungary. His conclusion, however, galvanized the reactions of anti-vaccinationists. In 1887, Kőrösy summarized the thoughts of the “Viennese anti-vaccinationist school” and stressed, in particular, the role of Friedrich Wilhelm Lorinser, Josef Hermann, W. Reitz, and Josef Keller in the spread of anti-vaccinationist ideas.63 These physicians used statistical proof as well as individual cases to argue that smallpox vaccination was particularly harmful. Their publications gained ground from the early 1870s and were successful in challenging vaccinationist policies in Vienna. This success was partly due to the credibility of their medical experience and their position in society: Lorinser was the director of the Wiedner Spital Krankenhaus; Hermann was the head of the department of dermatology at the same hospital; Reitz was the director of a children’s hospital in Saint Petersburg; and Keller was the chief physician of the Staats-Eisenbahn Gesellschaft. In their respective capacities, they all had first-hand experience with smallpox.

  • 64 F. W. Lorinser, 1891.
  • 65 F. W. Lorinser, 1891, p. 363.

19Lorinser became the first spokesperson of the group to speak up against Kőrösy’s method of relative intensity. He drew attention to the fact that even though the proportion of non-vaccinated was larger among smallpox victims it did not confirm that post-vaccination lethality was lower.64 According to Lorinser, Kőrösy used incorrect age groups, because the 0-5 and 5-20 age groups were more heterogeneous than the other age groups (20-30, 31-40, etc.). In addition, these groupings by age were problematic because the proportion of vaccinated persons fluctuated considerably with age. Lastly, fragile and ailing children were over-represented amongst the non-vaccinated simply because they were not healthy enough to get the vaccination. Kőrösy’s results were thus not worthy of generalization and Lorinser found a particular reason for these statistical aberrations: the Hungarian statistician was “not a doctor”65 and simply could not comprehend the true nature of smallpox.

  • 66 R. Kossmann, 1891.
  • 67 R. Kossmann, 1891, p. 758.

20Another reviewer of the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift, Robby Kossmann, a zoologist and medical professor, drew attention to the deceptive nature of medical statistics.66 For Kossmann, if one accepted that the protective power of vaccination could only be judged through medical statistics, then Kőrösy’s statistical tables disproved the efficacy of smallpox vaccination. First, vaccination lost its protective power over time, at ages above 30. Second, and this was more alarming, the lethality of typhus, cholera, and tuberculosis was three times higher among the vaccinated than among those who were unwilling to expose themselves to the harmful effects of vaccination.67

21In an 1880 article entitled “The importance of the life of an individual in the Darwinian world view” Kossmann argued:

  • 68 R. Weikart, 2004, p. 2.

“[The] Darwinian worldview must look upon the present sentimental conception of the value of the life of a human individual as an overestimate completely hindering the progress of humanity. The human state also, like every animal community of individuals, must reach an even higher level of perfection, if the possibility exists in it, through the destruction of the less well-endowed individual, for the more excellently endowed to win the space for the expansion of its progeny. […] The state only has an interest in preserving the more excellent life at the expense of the less excellent.”68

This quote illustrates that the disagreement was not only about the utility of vaccination; the two authors clashed in terms of social ideology as well. This was a dispute between the physician and the statistician as well as between the social Darwinist and the social reformer.

  • 69 A. Desrosières, 1993, pp. 104-111.

22This conflict could also be framed on a more theoretical level. The two men’s methodological frameworks took a wholly different approach to regularities and the difficulty of treating individual cases.69 Lorinser’s remark about the intelligibility of the statistician’s position – because he lacked medical expertise – was crucial, since the disease and its treatment represented a unique event on the part of the physician, in which the search for causes and the treatment must be carried out in a comprehensive and holistic way. Case histories counted more than statistics, and only the physician was capable of rendering cases intelligible to the observer through their tactful observation and the careful recording of cases. The statistical view, in contrast, provided explanation by emphasizing certain factors at the expense of others: for example, the argument that the spread of tuberculosis was encouraged by bad housing conditions neglected the role of heredity. The statistician tried to render reality less complex in order to draw numeric conclusions. Last, the statistician talked in terms of averages, mean values, and probabilities, whereas the physician clearly could not treat a patient partially or en moyenne. In the eyes of the physician, each case was strictly individual.

  • 70 J. Kőrösi, 1888.
  • 71 J. Pauly, 1889.

23The vaccination debate was not the only encounter between Kőrösy and physicians that challenged the statistician’s expertise and competence. An edited volume on the mortality statistics of Budapest between 1882 and 188570 received a quite harsh review on the part of a physician, Dr Pauly.71 He simply called the volume a “Zahlen Phalanx” that did not serve the interests of medical statisticians, philanthropists, economists, or public servants. Even Pauly realized that this was clearly a result of the author’s meagre financial resources, but without percentage distributions, the publication was no more than a mere collection of numbers. There was, however, a more important conceptual problem in Kőrösy’s work that also led to quite dismissive remarks. To paraphrase Pauly, the classification of causes of death should serve as Ariadne’s “red thread” to understand the tables, but it was so erroneous that even Theseus would be unable to use it. Pauly did not agree with putting certain causes of death into a single category or using symptoms as causes of death. “[B]ut is it that far from the statistical office to the University?” And on another occasion Pauly remarked that “a sad specialty in Budapest is the numerous deaths caused by idiocy”. Pauly’s final advice was for Kőrösy to consult physicians for the next volume so that there would surely be fewer mistakes in the final outcome.

  • 72 J. Körösi, 1890.

24Kőrösy’s reply duly responded to all the challenges but, more importantly, pointed to two key moments in our analysis of Kőrösy’s persona regarding his lack of social prestige and the statistical approach to social problems.72 Kőrösy was able to firmly reject Pauly’s challenge: Kőrösy did not have medical expertise, but his classification of causes of death followed others created by physicians. The main sources were Rudolf Virchow’s classification used for Berlin’s mortality statistics and Richard Boeckh’s works at the Prussian Statistical Bureau. The question of idiocy was also paradigmatic: Virchow used “Blödsinn, Geisteszerrüttung, Geistesschwäche” and the Wiedener Krankenhaus mentioned “Idiotismus” in their reports.

  • 73 J. Kőrösi, 1888, pp. 148-153.
  • 74 J. Pauly, 1889.

25The second point concerned the approach of Kőrösy and statisticians as opposed to physicians when constructing statistical indicators and cross-tables. Kőrösy analysed the influence of diet and nutrition on child mortality in the reviewed volume.73 He thus differentiated between babies raised at home and outside the home (ausser Haus gepflegt), and babies fed with breastmilk and artificial milk. The cross-table contained data on address, age at the time of death, and the most important causes of child mortality. The latter was criticized vehemently by Pauly as Kőrösy lumped together a bunch of seemingly unrelated causes of death. It is a “worthless”74 classification because meningitis, encephalitis (both inflammatory diseases), and hydrocephalus (abnormal build-up of fluid in the brain) were followed by convulsion (involuntary contraction of muscles). However, from Kőrösy’s perspective, Pauly simply did not understand the principal goal of his endeavour. He selected the most common causes of death in order to analyse the effects of breastfeeding and child rearing away from home. Kőrösy functioned as a sociologist: he was interested in the social problem and searched for the specific causes of child mortality. For Pauly, the physician, the medically appropriate classification of causes of death, in contrast, took priority over any problematization.

3. The standard population and the law of large numbers: the challenge of mathematical statistics

  • 75 T. Altschul, 1893.
  • 76 J. Rychna, 1894.
  • 77 Neuvième session du Congrès international de statistique à Budapest: rapports et résolutions, 1876 (...)
  • 78 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1892, p. 81.

26The mortality debate presented in the introduction demonstrated that the correlation between mortality rates and the public health of cities is not straightforward. The question of whose death to count and how to make the necessary calculations significantly influenced the results and rendered official statistics incomparable. This was not a specifically Hungarian problem, however. The mortality rates of Prague, that gave the impression of a really unhealthy town,75 were challenged by a local physician because the data included deaths of foreigners – Ortsfremder – and were therefore not an accurate indicator of the healthiness of the city.76 The question was also discussed at the International Statistical Congress in Budapest in 1876 in the form of a proposal by Kőrösy.77 At the 1892 meeting of the International Institute of Statistics in Vienna, Kőrösy tabled a resolution to exclude from mortality statistics all individuals having resided less than three months in a city before their death, but the committee voted against it.78 At the same meeting, Kőrösy proposed a method, called the “mortality index”, to address the similarly distorting effect of age distribution. Kőrösy’s idea was that the most influential independent variable relating to mortality was age, and thus by compensating differences in the age distribution of cities, one could arrive at an unbiased indicator of salubrity. Kőrösy presumed that sanitary conditions affected all age groups in the same way, which meant that the age distributions of cities, and the differences thereof, significantly influenced mortality rates beyond the effect of public health.

  • 79 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1892, pp. 35-37.
  • 80 J. Korösi, 1892.
  • 81 T. Szél, 1927, pp. 140-141.
  • 82 G. Koch, 1883.
  • 83 W. Ogle, 1883.

27At the 1892 meeting in Vienna, Kőrösy’s audience included such figures as Jacques Bertillon, “chef des travaux de statistiques de la ville de Paris”, Richard Boeckh, director of the statistical office in Berlin, Josef Erben, director of the statistical office in Prague, Ernst Hasse, director in Leipzig, Heinrich Rauchberg, secretary of the Central Statistical Commission in Vienna, and Wilhelm Lexis.79 In his paper, Kőrösy demonstrated the incomparability of mortality rates and suggested implementing a framework and a method to calculate internationally comparable mortality rates.80 Kőrösy’s argument could be summarized as follows: if there is a certain age-specific order of mortality, meaning that the “vitality” (Lebenskraft) of specific age groups is inferior to others, most importantly the vitality of infants and the elderly, then the age distribution of a population significantly influences the overall mortality rate, although age has no connection whatsoever to the sanitary (Salubrität) conditions of the land or city. It should be added that the standard-age index, as noted by Tivadar Szél, author of the intellectual biography of Kőrösy, should rather be have been called the “Kőrösy-Koch-Ogle” standard-population index,81 because Georg Koch, the director of the statistical bureau in Hamburg,82 and William Ogle, former director of the statistical office at the General Register Office in London,83 came up with the idea of a standard population index in 1883, before and independently of Kőrösy. Kőrösy did know of Koch’s and Ogle’s work at the time of the Viennese meeting in 1892, something he later acknowledged, but he can be still credited with bringing the idea to public attention and defending it amidst criticism.

  • 84 J. Körösi, 1893, pp. 220-223.
  • 85 J. Körösi, 1893, pp. 224-228.

28For Kőrösy, there remained the question of the number of age groups to be formed and the choice of a standard age distribution in comparisons. He answered both questions pragmatically. He opted to settle for four homogeneous age-groups (0-1, 1-20, 20-50, 50+); infants, youngsters, adults, and the elderly were sufficiently separated, and, more importantly, the creation of more age groups would mean more investment in terms of calculation, unfortunately not proportional to the increase in accuracy.84 Furthermore, based on the argument of “historical right”, Kőrösy recommended Sweden’s age distribution as the basis of the standard population because Sweden played a leading role in demography.85 Using the age-distribution of all European countries would be theoretically more appropriate, but the calculation of this standard distribution would take too much effort and would not be practical. At the Viennese meeting, Wilhelm Lexis, for instance, characterized the method as purely of an empirical nature and theoretically dubious. However, in the absence of a better method, he also recommended accepting it for the present.

  • 86 K. Kropp, 2016 [2015], pp. 18-19; H. Westergaard, 1923.
  • 87 M. Rubin, 1893.

29The fact that Kőrösy’s “mortality index” was presented at the Viennese meeting, published in the Bulletin of the International Institute of Statistics and in several other publications such as the Jahrbücher für Nationalökonomie und Statistik guaranteed a wide international audience. A critical review was soon published by Marcus Rubin, a collaborator of Harald Westergaard who was also commissioned by the municipality of Copenhagen to improve the city’s statistics.86 Rubin dismissed the idea of the mortality “Standardzahl” for several reasons. For him, the mortality rate of a city is something real or existing, while the mortality index is a mere fiction. More importantly, the choice of standard population influences the value of the mortality index and might give a false comparative order of mortality rates.87

  • 88 L. Bortkewitsch, 1898.
  • 89 L. Bortkewitsch, 1896.
  • 90 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 2, 1895, pp. LXIX‑LXXIV.
  • 91 L. Bortkewitsch, 1896, pp. 675-676.
  • 92 L. Bortkewitsch, 1896, pp. 682-687.
  • 93 R. G., 1896, p. 124.

30The most ardent critic of the mortality index was Ladislaus Bortkiewicz. Bortkiewicz was a Russian economist and statistician of Polish origin who became famous in statistical circles for a paper on the law of small numbers.88 He was a generation younger than Kőrösy and on the verge of being named associate professor at the university of Berlin at this point. In the same Jahrbücher as Rubin, Bortkiewicz published a series of articles on theoretical statistics, the last one entirely devoted to Kőrösy’s mortality index.89 His reaction was without doubt exacerbated by the fact that the Bern meeting of the International Institute of Statistics had accepted Kőrösy’s proposal on introducing the mortality index in international comparisons and retained Sweden as the standard population.90 The index’s arbitrariness was a source of trouble in the eyes of Bortkiewicz: instead of four age groups, the statistician could also make a calculation for each particular age – as Heinrich Rauchberg proposed at the Chicago meeting of the International Institute of Statistics –, and there also remained other variables beyond age, that could influence overall mortality but did not have any connection with sanitary conditions in general. Calculating along the lines of wealth or the number of dwelling occupants per room would similarly have a compensatory effect on overall mortality rates.91 The choice of Sweden as a standard population was arbitrary and scientifically inappropriate. To use the average age distribution of the cities and lands in question would be equally misleading. The relation between cities A and B became significantly different if a third city was included in the comparison. On a more theoretical level, Bortkiewicz showed that in the case of a “stationary population” with identical birth and mortality rates, Kőrösy’s mortality index yielded similar results to the classic mortality rate.92 Consequently, instead of the mortality index, average life expectancy should be used to compare sanitary conditions in various lands and cities. Following this line of thought, a reviewer in the Oesterreichische Revue described the debate as well resolved: “even the most faithful followers of the standard age distribution method should absolutely approve Bortkewicz’s calculations.”93

  • 94 J. Körösi, 1893, p. 227.
  • 95 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1900, p. 98.
  • 96 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1899, p. 173.

31Kőrösy first replied to the remarks of Rubin and Bortkiewicz with a pragmatic argument: he demonstrated that the order of mortality rates in Europe did not change significantly if mortality rates were calculated based on the whole European population or on Sweden’s population alone as the standard population.94 The second part of Kőrösy’s defence was more important and points to the conclusions of this paper: the fact that the standard index is an artificial figure, as Rubin pointed out, does not raise any methodological issues, because the goal of the standard index is not “descriptive”, it looks for “causal relations”95 between mortality and public health. Statistics should go one step further than enumerating facts – a sentence that could be the cornerstone of Kőrösy’s sociologically-minded statistics. In addition, despite the above criticism, Kőrösy could proudly reference statistical offices (Boston, The Hague) and statisticians (Luigi Bodio) who had already applied the standard population method in their calculations of comparative mortality rates by 1897. The method thus helped statisticians to provide statistical comparisons, for instance, in all the cities of Massachusetts or in Europe.96

Conclusion

  • 97 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. B. 254.
  • 98 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1897, p. 175.

32József Kőrösy took pleasure in responding to critics. In the debate on the logic of statistics, Kőrösy and Jekelfalussy engaged in a sparring match, refuting each other’s arguments in a series of combative articles. In the same manner, Kőrösy replied to each anti-vaccinationist critic in the Wiener Medizinische Wochenschrift and in the Wiener Klinische Wochenschrift. Crucially, both Jekelfalussy and the Viennese physicians turned to non-scientific arguments about Kőrösy’s credibility and referred to his social origin and lack of university education as a last resort in the debate. Kőrösy’s Jewishness, without being specifically mentioned, also loomed silently over the dispute. Kőrösy was “not a doctor” as Lorinser claimed. The debate on the logic of statistics waned after the exchanges presented above, and, by 1897, the two protagonists traded cordial letters, Jekelfalussy addressing Kőrösy as “My esteemed friend”.97 Compulsory smallpox vaccination remained the norm throughout Europe until the early 1970s. In Hungary, compulsory vaccination was introduced in 1876 and compulsory revaccination in 1887, and remained in force until the eradication of smallpox in 1979. The aftermath of the “standard population” debate is more ambiguous. The concept is still widely used by contemporary statisticians to compare populations with different age distributions, mostly in demography and epidemiology. Today, there is also a “European Standard Population”, last revised by Eurostat in 2013. Kőrösy’s concept thus remained relevant, though its form was quickly surpassed. As Bortkiewicz put it in 1897: “For those statisticians who are not able in mathematics, the method of Mr. Kőrösy has the merit of being easily applicable.”98 Kőrösy’s critics rightly pointed to the crudity of Kőrösy’s calculations, but most of them acknowledged the pertinence of the idea.

  • 99 L. Goldman, 2022.
  • 100 L. Goldman, 2022, pp. 30-31.
  • 101 B.-P. Lécuyer, 1987; I. Hacking, 1987.
  • 102 J. Szeredás, 1970, p. 8.

33Lawrence Goldman recently described how the emergence of mathematical statistics, pioneered by Galton, Pearson, and Edgeworth, challenged and overshadowed the “statistical movement” that dominated the field of statistics from the beginning of the nineteenth century.99 Its quest to understand social problems and treat them with the help of accurate statistics was unsuccessful until the 1870s because of the limited statistical techniques available at the time: the calculations of social statisticians were “simple and crude”, capable of illustrating and exemplifying social behaviours but unable to “explain them adequately”, and the “microbiological causes of illness and death were uncovered and unexplained” at the time.100 These “simple and crude” techniques were based on aggregates and mean values and did not include correlation or regression. Kőrösy could be likened to the Victorian statistical movement in many respects. He belonged to the tradition of the “old social statistician” in the line of Quetelet who searched for regularity and order in masses of statistical data to uncover the causes of social problems. This left an indelible imprint on Kőrösy’s career. Within the relatively restricted scope of Budapest, in-depth data collection by Kőrösy’s statistical bureau gave him the opportunity for creative analysis. Kőrösy did not apply sophisticated mathematical methods, like William Farr or Ernst Engel,101 but applied innovative methods to explain and treat social problems in Budapest. The three case studies demonstrate how socio-political ideology and social credibility intermingled in Kőrösy’s career: in Hungary, his lack of social recognition was most blatant and was clearly palpable in Jekelfalussy’s remarks. Kőrösy first became a distinguished figure abroad and gained international prestige before becoming respected in Hungary and in his “beloved” Budapest.102 The vaccination debate shows the importance of socio-political ideas and disciplinary competition. In this debate, Kőrösy represented a weak profession in contrast to the medical world that valued individual observations over statistical figures. The third debate on the standard population illustrates the importance of Kőrösy on the international scene. His concept was duly discussed, criticized, modified, and later endorsed by the International Institute of Statistics despite the crudeness of the calculations themselves. It was thus within the international statistical field that Kőrösy, a representative of the old school of social statistics, was most influential in the development of statistical thinking.

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Bibliographie

Primary Sources

Archives

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Notes

1 K. Keleti, 1869.

2 Budapest was officially established in 1873 from the merger of three cities, Pest, Buda, and Óbuda.

3 Kőrösy changed his family name several times during his lifetime and used the different variations (Körösi, Kőrösi, Kőrösy, Körösy) according to the context and sometimes quite randomly. In our references and bibliography, his family name and given name are always given in the form it appeared in the original publication, whereas throughout the article, we call him József Kőrösy, the name most broadly used after his ennoblement.

4 On the early history of the municipal statistical bureau: D. Dányi, 1964; B. Földes, 1937; G. Thirring, 1894; J. Szeredás, 1970.

5 “A pestvárosi statisztikai hivatal”, 1878, p. 3.

6 J. Kőrösi, 1876, p. V. The first volume on mortality statistics was followed by several others in 1877, 1885, 1888, 1901, and so forth.

7 “A fővárosi halandóság”, 1876, p. 1119.

8 “A fővárosi halandóság”, 1876, p. 1119.

9 “Budapest főorvosa”, 1878.

10 “A patrubanyalukai főorvostól”, 1878, p. 5.

11 B. Földes, 1937, p. 880.

12 K. Keleti, 1874.

13 D. Rózsa, 2017, p. 1073.

14 For the history of international statistical congresses: N. Randeraad, 2011.

15 T. M. Porter, 1995.

16 S. Shapin, 1995.

17 I. Hacking, 1990, pp. 189-199.

18 M. Labbé, 2007; B. Zimmermann, 1994.

19 J. Osterhammel, 2014, p. 26.

20 J. Körösi, 1879, pp. 142-143.

21 J. Körösi, 1879, p. 145.

22 T. M. Porter, 2007.

23 E. Brix, 1982; W. Göderle, 2016; J. D. Hansen, 2015; G. Kövér, 2016; M. Labbé, 2019.

24 For the biography of Kőrösy, see: T. Szél, 1927, pp. 7-26.

25 Mór Jókai (1825-1904) was a Hungarian novelist and parliamentary deputy.

26 “Szántói” is the praedicatum of nobility that literally means “from Szántó”.

27 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. B. 28.

28 S. Patriarca, 2003.

29 J. Szeredás, 1970, pp. 18-20.

30 A. Kígyósi, 2007, p. 721.

31 T. Szél, 1927, pp. 43-45.

32 For an overview of Kőrösy’s statistical oeuvre: T. Szél, 1927.

33 T. M. Porter, 1986, p. 41.

34 I briefly described the debate between Kőrösy and Jekelfalussy on mortality rates in a previous article (M. Erdélyi, 2018, pp. 119-120). The present paper examines this debate from a different angle and analyses in more detail the epistemic confrontation between the two statisticians. See also: E. Kalmár, 2019.

35 J. Kőrösi, 1891b, pp. 135-137.

36 M. Pisztóry, 1892, pp. 489-490.

37 J. Kőrösi, 1891a. Jekelfalussy’s own project materialized a few years later in 1896 on the occasion of the millennium festivities. Jekelfalussy’s edited volume (The Millennium of Hungary and its People) was published in Hungarian, English, German, and French.

38 J. Kőrösi, 1891a; J. Jekelfalussy, 1891; J. Kőrösi, 1891b; J. Jekelfalussy, 1892.

39 J. Kőrösi, 1891a, p. XIII.

40 J. Kőrösi, 1891c.

41 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, pp. 951-952.

42 J. Jekelfalussy, 1892, p. 57.

43 J. Kőrösi, 1891b, pp. 127-130.

44 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, pp. 948-949.

45 K. Knies, 1850.

46 J. Jekelfalussy, 1892, p. 59.

47 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, p. 949.

48 J. Jekelfalussy, 1891, p. 950.

49 J. Jekelfalussy, 1892, p. 60.

50 L. Daston & H. O. Sibum, 2003, p. 2.

51 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. A. 60, p. 1.

52 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. A. 60, pp. 32-40.

53 A. Desrosières, 1993, pp. 94-104.

54 A. Desrosières, 1993, pp. 104-111.

55 E. M. Magnello, 2011, pp. 262-263.

56 Some general work but without much information on the Habsburg Empire: S. Williamson, 2007; M. J. Bennett, 2020.

57 A. Rusnock, 2007, p. 346.

58 A. Rusnock, 2007, pp. 354-355.

59 J. B. Hamilton, 1887.

60 J. Kőrösi, 1889.

61 N. Durbach, 2005; I. Glynn & J. Glynn, 2004; C. Huerkamp, 1985; S. Williamson, 2007.

62 J. Kőrösy, 1897, p. 25ff.; id., 1889, p. 108.

63 J. Kőrösy, 1887.

64 F. W. Lorinser, 1891.

65 F. W. Lorinser, 1891, p. 363.

66 R. Kossmann, 1891.

67 R. Kossmann, 1891, p. 758.

68 R. Weikart, 2004, p. 2.

69 A. Desrosières, 1993, pp. 104-111.

70 J. Kőrösi, 1888.

71 J. Pauly, 1889.

72 J. Körösi, 1890.

73 J. Kőrösi, 1888, pp. 148-153.

74 J. Pauly, 1889.

75 T. Altschul, 1893.

76 J. Rychna, 1894.

77 Neuvième session du Congrès international de statistique à Budapest: rapports et résolutions, 1876, p. 37.

78 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1892, p. 81.

79 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1892, pp. 35-37.

80 J. Korösi, 1892.

81 T. Szél, 1927, pp. 140-141.

82 G. Koch, 1883.

83 W. Ogle, 1883.

84 J. Körösi, 1893, pp. 220-223.

85 J. Körösi, 1893, pp. 224-228.

86 K. Kropp, 2016 [2015], pp. 18-19; H. Westergaard, 1923.

87 M. Rubin, 1893.

88 L. Bortkewitsch, 1898.

89 L. Bortkewitsch, 1896.

90 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 2, 1895, pp. LXIX‑LXXIV.

91 L. Bortkewitsch, 1896, pp. 675-676.

92 L. Bortkewitsch, 1896, pp. 682-687.

93 R. G., 1896, p. 124.

94 J. Körösi, 1893, p. 227.

95 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1900, p. 98.

96 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1899, p. 173.

97 KSH Könyvtár, Budapest, V. B. 254.

98 Bulletin de l’Institut international de statistique, no. 1, 1897, p. 175.

99 L. Goldman, 2022.

100 L. Goldman, 2022, pp. 30-31.

101 B.-P. Lécuyer, 1987; I. Hacking, 1987.

102 J. Szeredás, 1970, p. 8.

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Mátyás Erdélyi, « A Statistical Expert on the Margin: The Career Trajectory of József Kőrösy »Histoire & mesure, XXXVIII-1 | 2023, 127-150.

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Mátyás Erdélyi, « A Statistical Expert on the Margin: The Career Trajectory of József Kőrösy »Histoire & mesure [En ligne], XXXVIII-1 | 2023, mis en ligne le 30 juin 2023, consulté le 29 septembre 2023. URL : http://journals.openedition.org/histoiremesure/19093 ; DOI : https://doi.org/10.4000/histoiremesure.19093

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Mátyás Erdélyi

University of Vienna, Central European University.

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